Centre must ensure it picks up tab for all poor

The passage of the National Food Security Bill in its present form in the ongoing parliament session looks remote. In the Bill, people coming under the priority household category form 46 per cent of the rural households and 28 per cent of the total urban households in the country.

These prioritised groups shall be entitled to 7 kgs of cereals every month and others, the general household, shall receive 3 kgs of cereals at not more than 50 per cent of the minimum support price and adjusted price of rice per month.

However, there is neither any yardstick developed nor any standardised criteria mentioned in the Bill to get clarity on “who are those priority or general group category people”.

This confusion allows strong fear among a larger section of the society that the said bill in its present form may create more risk in terms of excluding a large chunk of the population as part of the government’s new proposal of regrouping households. Grouping and regrouping people without providing any valid and acceptable rational justification will bring more risk in terms of reaching out to the most needy sections of the society for implementation of any welfare scheme.

The government should introspect the fact that it is due to lack of work in rural areas that people are poor and hungry. So, there is a need to create access to more work, where one can earn a better living. This can be managed very well through the existing MGNREGA (with some changes in the approach), which guarantees 100 days of job in a year to a poor family.

Take the example of a poor five-member family, where one may find at least two earning members. If these two persons are provided at least 200 days of work each, the income generated through 400 days of work by them will help them to get the poverty line income for the whole household.

So the government should, on a priority basis, explore such more public work, create an active government sector body to engage solely to explore such works at village level and allocate adequate funds to make this happen in every nook and cranny of the country. Here, the duty of the poor families is to engage in the available public work in their respective areas and earn to have a better living.

For this, there is no need for the government to visit each and every household for identification of poor families. Any villager who is interested in working in available public works in his/her respective area should be welcome. The households will then be able to buy food grains of their choice either in fair price shops or in open market and the country can achieve food security.

The bill carries another contradictory statement, which says that the long-term objective of the legislation is to ensure agricultural development in the country. If one examines the Indian states, there is report of unwillingness of farm labourers to go for wage work, leading to situations of land remaining uncultivated, where people are being provided 35 kg rice per month. How the government will achieve agricultural growth in such circumstances is unclear. This statement also brings out a clear apprehension that while giving subsidy in food items, the government may slowly reduce subsidies on farm-related items.

As mentioned, there is hardly any scope for enhancing agricultural growth with this form. It is necessary on the part of the government to clarify how this arrangement will ensure agricultural growth in the country. Looking at the exclusion risk in this context, there is also a strong need to identify where people are losing more. This looks like if thousands will gain out of this food security bill, lakhs will be losing as part of a possible slow withdrawal of agricultural subsidies for farmers.

The writer works with an international development agency